EXHIBIT: THE MEDALLIC ART OF JOÃO DUARTE

The American Numismatic Society is pleased to announce a new exhibit The Medallic Art of João Duarte The Winner of the J. Sanford Saltus Award for Signal Achievement in the Art of the Medal

Portuguese artist João Duarte is the recipient of the Society’s 2011 J. Sanford Saltus Award for Signal Achievement in the Art of the Medal. An Award ceremony, lecture and exhibit opening will be held on 6 November 2012 at the Society. Dr. Maria Rosa Figueiredo, curator at the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, will speak at the ceremony on the history of Portuguese medallic art and Duarte’s place within it.

Graduated in 1978 from the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes de Lisboa, with an emphasis in plastic arts and sculpture, Prof. Duarte serves on the fine arts faculty of the Universidade de Lisboa. Over the course of a highly prolific career, he has focused his energies primarily on sculpture and medallic art, producing 45 public art monuments located throughout Portugal and a dozen commemorative coins for the Portuguese Mint. But it is the 150 or so medals he has created to date that have most caught the eye of critics, collectors, and curators, earning him a number of prestigious awards already, including the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Prize for Innovation and Creativity (presented at the 28th FIDEM congress in 2002). Duarte’s medals have been featured in over a dozen solo-artist shows, including an important a 30-year retrospective of his work held in 2010 at the Portuguese Mint. This retrospective documented not just the evolution of Duarte as an artist, but also his critical role in the continuing development of the art medal in Portugal.

The genius of Duarte’s work, in part, lies in his keen awareness of the long tradition of the medal, from its numismatic origins in 15th century Italy to its post-WWII sculptural permutations. Not one to always abandon traditional aspects of the medal—its circular shape and use of legends, for example--he recognizes the essential strengths of the inherited format, but moves well beyond its limitations. Key to his vision is an understanding of the traditional medal as handheld art, and the ways in which the viewer—or holder—interacts intimately with the object in hand. While generations of connoisseurs have delighted in the visual details of medals and the tactile pleasures of heft and high relief, any such enjoyment is ultimately passive. Duarte’s work, by contrast, invites viewers to be more active: many of his medals can be disassembled, many have moving parts, some of which produce sounds, adding a whole new sensory range to the experience of the art. Manipulating and listening to the medals become as much a part of the experience as simply holding and looking. Consequently, Duarte’s medals really demand to be held since full appreciation of the objects cannot be obtained by simply looking at them behind glass. A number of Duarte’s medals in the ANS collection will be on display in the Society’s gallery from 6 November 2012 to 15 March 2013.

6 November 2012 5:30 pm Reception and exhibit opening 6:00 pm Award Ceremony & Lecture For More information or to RSVP contact Joanne Isaac at 212-571-4470 ext. 112 or ANS@numismatics.org

To read the complete press release, see: The Medallic Art of João Duarte (numismatics.org/wikiuploads/NewsEvents/2012_1012
PR_Duarte_SaltusAwardampexhibit.pdf)

For more information, see the online exhibit: The Medallic Art of João Duarte (numismatics.org/Exhibits/DuarteExhibit)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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